Gazpacho

Yesterday I went to the dentist. When I was done, I was instructed that I am only to eat soft foods for the next two weeks, and only cold foods for the next 24 hours. Not a problem, I figured. I've been through this before. My wife and I made sure to stop by the grocery store on the way out and stock up on all sorts of cold, soft foods: pudding cups, jello cups, yogurt, and even a small tub of cut melon. By the time I was finished with work that day, I had discovered a problem: I was sugared out. Looking at the list of soft food suggestions that they gave me, the only cold food that wasn't sweet was cottage cheese. I was going to lose my mind if I couldn't get something savory. Then I remembered a soup that I knew would be perfect, and fortunately my boss remembered the name when I described it: gazpacho to the rescue!

Goozpacho

3 medium roma tomatoes, cored and quartered
1 medium tomatillo, cored and quartered
1 large jalapeno, seeded and roughly chopped
1/3 cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, smashed and roughly chopped
1 slice sourdough bread, torn into pieces
1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 very small handful fresh cilantro
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

First, soak the bread in water for about 10 to 30 minutes. Sourdough is a little heartier, so it can handle it. Then squeeze the water out. Put the garlic in your blender or food processor and pulse. Add the tomato and pulse a few more times to get a little liquid going at the bottom. Add everything else and pulse until any chunks left are tiny. If you're stuck using a blender to do this like I was, you may need to add a tablespoon or two of water to make sure there's enough liquid to blend. But remember, there's nothing in here to keep it emulsified, so if there's too much liquid, it will look broken and seperated. It doesn't make it taste bad, but some people might not like the appearance. If this happens to you, just make sure to give it a little stir with each spoonful. Make sure to chill before serving, and garnish with fresh cilantro if you like. This recipe ended up making me two servings.

Now, if you follow this recipe exactly, you'll have a soup that not only tastes really, really good, but would also please any vegan. And if it wasn't for the bread, it would even please the raw foodists. I don't want you raw foodists making this without the bread and calling it gazpacho, though. If it doesn't have bread, it's not gazpacho. It's just cold soup. Of course, if you do what I did and soak the bread in chicken stock instead of water, well, you'll have a more flavorful soup, but you can't even call it vegetarian anymore. And if you pureed it really fine and added a hit of Worcestershire sauce and a shot of vodka, I'm sure you'd have a pretty killer Bloody Mary. Seriously, this reminded me of a Virgin Mary I had once at a tavern in New Hampshire, except way better. If anyone tries that, let me know how it turns out.



Update (1:03pm): I've decided to name this soup after Goozbach, mostly because Goozpacho sounds way cooler than "Joseph's Gazpacho". Plus, he apparently made gazpacho once for a date with a hot vegetarian computer geek chick.

A Poll For The Girls: Romantic Dinner

Many of you will remember my poll for the guys last month. Ladies, I'd like you to sound off now. I've decided to write my handout for my class so that it can be used either to teach a class full of women, a class full or men, or both.

The rules are as before. Your sweetie has decided to cook you a nice, romantic dinner. You can have whatever you want, so long as it's not too extravagant. What would you like him to make?

Again, every woman is different. I know that if I serve my wife steak and potatoes, I'll get lucky that night. However, apparently studies show that things like steak (or the smell of cooked meat in general) are big turn-offs for the ladies. Men's cologne is on the list too. You ladies sure do like to make it hard for us, don't you? Just kidding. Mostly. Tell me, what would you like? Be as descriptive about the food as you like. This is for posterity.

Phyllo Cheesecake Tartlets

As promised on the PLUG mailing list, here is the recipe I used this evening for my cheesecake tartlets. Those of you who read my post on baking cheesecake already know some of the basics behind it. Those of you who read my more recent tutorial on making phyllo cups will know the rest. But let me give you some more exact details.

Phyllo Cheesecake Tartlets

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
48 phyllo cups

I baked 48 phyllo cups the night before, as per the directions in my tutorial. When I was ready, I preheated my oven to 350F. I used a hand mixer to cream the cheese by itself in a bowl, and then added the sugar and continued to cream until it was fully integrated, stopped a couple of times to completely scrape the bowl (including sides and bottom). I added the eggs and vanilla extract, and continued to mix until fully integrated, again stopping to scrape twice. Then I poured the batter into a plastic zip-top bag, snipped off a corner, and piped into the phyllo cups. I had just enough for 48 cups. I baked at 350F for about 10 to 12 minutes, until the centers no longer jiggled, them moved to the counter to cool. When cooled, I sprinkled with mini chocolate chips. It looked something like this:



For some reason the color was a little washed out, so I attempted to correct it with Photoshop. I think I was almost successful. Now, why did I use such a high ratio of egg? Mostly because I wanted to stretch the batter, to make it last a few more cups. But since I had a higher ratio of liquid, it did turn out just a little more custardy. Because each cup was so small, and baking time was so short, there was really no need for a water bath, which would have made a soggy mess of everything anyway.

You can use any cheesecake mixture you want for these, and it will likely work out just fine. Today I used plain. In my first attempt, I used a key lime white chocolate recipe that I have managed to misplace since. In that case, I garnished with raspberries and took a photo, which now resides in my wallpaper area.

Tutorials

Ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you too, allow me to direct your attention for a moment to my new tutorials area. As I'm sure you've noticed, I've started working on tutorials for a few things that may be a little more intense. A lot of these are things that I take for granted all the time because I've done them so many times. For instance, I couldn't even begin to tell you how many thousands of phyllo cups I've made, just in the past 2 or 3 years. I've gotten to the point where I barely even think about it anymore. I used to keep a box of phyllo in the fridge, rather than the freezer, because it's so versatile and I found so many uses for it.

I only have a couple of tutorials up so far, clarified butter and phyllo cups. I'm trying to stick with tutorials that are more of a foundation than anything. For instance, there's a world of recipes that call for clarified butter, including phyllo cups. And once you've made phyllo cups, there's a world of things that they can be filled with, from cheesecake or quiche to crab salad or scallop mousse.

If there's anything in particular that you'd like to see a tutorial on, please leave me a comment on this post and I'll see what I can do. I'm going to try to stick with foundational tutorials, but if you're not sure whether or not what you're looking for qualifies, go ahead and suggest it. At the very least, I might just blog about it anyway.

Tutorial: Phyllo Cups

I think that most people who know what it is find phyllo dough to be intimidating. And rightfully so, it would seem. It's certainly not a common ingredient in most American households. It's paper thin, dries out easily, and is essentially useless when it dries out. I am here to tell you that phyllo dough is nothing to be afraid of. The first time I ever worked with phyllo dough, I didn't have a handy little tutorial such as this. My boss at the time gave me instructions over the phone, made me write them down, and then read them back to him. Fortunately, I managed to pull them off with little difficulty, even despite only having old, crackly phyllo dough to work with. If I can do it with crackly dough, with phoned-in instructions, then you can easily do it with fresh phyllo dough from the store.

There are a few things we'll need to get started:

1 package phyllo (or filo) dough
2 cutting boards, each bigger than the phyllo rolled out flat
1 tea towel, also bigger than the phyllo rolled flat
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, clarified and melted
1 pizza cutter
1 paint brush that has never been used for painting
mini muffin tins

Mise en plas (meaning, having everything in place) is important. At some point, your work area will probably look something like this:



Now, phyllo dough is sold frozen, so you're going to have to thaw it. The box will probably recommend letting it sit on the counter for a couple of hours before working with it. I've found that this produces crackly dough that is difficult to work with. Instead, park your phyllo in the fridge the night before you plan to use it. This will thaw it much more gently. When you're ready, preheat your oven to 350F. Then take your tea towel and get it just barely damp. If it feels damp but you can't squeeze even a drop of water out of it, then it's probably okay. Line up your cutting boards next to each other and unroll the phyllo onto the one away from you. It will probably be rolled up in a piece of plastic longer than the dough. Don't throw this away! In fact, go ahead and keep it underneath your phyllo dough so that you don't lose it.

When you have your phyllo rolled out, go ahead and cover it with your tea towel. Remember, phyllo can dry out quickly, and this will help keep it moist. Now, you're going to be working with one sheet at a time here. To get a new sheet, remove the tea towel from the dough, take a sheet of phyllo and lay it where you'll be working with it, and then put the tea towel back over the dough before working with the new piece of phyllo.



Okay, step 1, grab a piece of phyllo and lay it out on the cutting board closest to you. Be careful with this first sheet; remember, it's as thin as paper, but it does tear a lot more easily. Once you get a feel for phyllo, you'll be able to work a lot more quickly. For now, just worry about getting used to it. When you have it laid out flat in front of you, dip your brush in the clarified butter and then lightly brush the phyllo sheet, starting with the edges. The edges dry out a lot more quickly, so you want to get them first. When you have the edges done, brush the rest of it. Remember to go light, both with the butter and the pressure you apply to the brush. You don't want soggy phyllo, and you don't want the brush tearing it either.



Now, wasn't that easy? Okay, so maybe not so much the first time. Maybe there's a couple of tears in the dough. Don't sweat it. Just fix them the best you can, and if it starts to look worse, then leave it alone. You've done all you can. It's time for the next layer. Now, be careful laying this layer down, because it will stick to the butter on the first layer. Once you have it down, follow the same procedure: brush the edges, then the middle.



Don't worry if the sheets aren't lined up perfectly! Chances are they won't be, and that's okay. In fact, uneven edges are kind of rustic and homemade looking, and believe me, that's a good thing. It adds interest to the final product. Okay, are you finished with your second sheet? Go ahead and do a third sheet, and then a fourth. Four layers is about perfect for phyllo cups. The next thing we need to do is cut our creation into squares with our handy-dandy pizza cutter. Most supermarket varieties will cut quite nicely into 12 squares, but I have seen some brands that are twice as large as normal. If yours is just slightly smaller than a cookie sheet, then you're good to go. If it's twice that, cut it in half first, and then cut each half into 12 squares.



Now, here's the cool thing about phyllo dough. Once it's been brushed with butter, it's not going to dry out. So take your time cutting, so that you can get each square roughly the same size. Personally, I have next to no ability getting the size right, so I take my time. Once you have it cut into squares (actually, they'll be a little more rectangular, but don't worry about it), it's time to press them into the muffin tins. Now, I bought my mini muffin tins at a restaurant supply store, but I've seen them in almost every supermarket I've been to. My tins hold 24 muffins, but if you can only find tins with room for 12, don't sweat it.

Pick up a sqaure of phyllo and press it carefully into a cup in your muffin tin, butter side down. The butter will act as a lubricant, keeping you from having to spray the pan. Do be careful, though. The phyllo may be four times as thick, but it can still tear, so be careful. Try to make sure you get it pressed into the edges as much as possible, but don't stress if it's not perfect. And don't bother trying to make it look all symmetrical either. Remember, rustic is good, but don't go so rustic that it starts to look sloppy.



Now, if your tin holds 24 like mine does, you'll have to do another four sheets of phyllo. It should be a lot easier this time, since you've had some practice. Don't worry about the ones you've already done, they butter will keep them from drying out. Do another four sheets of phyllo, butter between each layer, and then cut into pieces and press into the muffin tin. You'll come out with something that looks a little like this:



Now you can go ahead and bake 'em. Your oven should already be at 350F, which is about right. Set your timer for 8 minutes and don't open the door until the timer goes off. I mean it! But when the timer does go off, check on them. If they're not golden brown, give 'em another couple of minutes. Yes, use a timer. Do this until they do look golden brown, and then make a note of hour long that took. Mine usually take 10 - 12 minutes. They should look something like this:



That's right, golden brown and delicious. Now, when you bake your second batch, keep something in mind. Every time you open the oven door, heat escapes, and you add time to how long it takes to bake. So if you checked on them at 8 minutes, then 10, and then finally pulled them at 12, that doesn't mean that you can leave your next batch in for 12 minutes. If you do that, chances are your second batch will burn. Leave it in for 10 minutes and see how it does. Before long, you and your oven will come to understand each other, and you'll know about how long to bake each batch.

Now, another nice thing about these is that even though the phyllo may have had moisture when you started, it's all been baked out. This means that when cooling the cups, you can leave them in the muffin tins for as long as you need to, and the bottoms won't get soggy like they would with cupcakes or muffins. Still, at some point you may want to move them to a cookie sheet, for whatever it is you're going to use them for. They can stand on their own now, so they don't need the support from the muffin tin. Go ahead and line a cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper, and then line it with your phyllo cups. You can fit a lot more on there than you might think, but be careful not to overcrowd it. At this point, you can wrap the whole thing in plastic wrap (carefully, so as not to break the cups) and store in a safe place for a couple of days. I wouldn't hold them for too long though, or they'll start to go stale.

Now, another nice thing about these is that you can bake them well before you need them. If you're planning a dinner party and you know that time will be limited between the time you get home from work and the time guests start arriving, you can bake these the night before and have them all ready for you. You don't even have to refrigerate them. In fact, I wouldn't, because they might pick up moisture from the refrigerator and get soggy. Just keep them on a counter, away from the kids, and you'll be fine.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are a funny thing. I think that most of us have spent our lives dealing with stereotypes, more more obvious than others. I don't know how it came up, but while I was in a conversation today with Tuxgirl, we started talking about the number of female computer geeks. Those of you who work in the tech world have already noticed that there's a lot more guys than girls. A lot. Of course, this leads to stereotypes about female geeks, or rather, the common belief that they don't really exist. At one point, she pointed me to a page talking about the dos and don'ts of encouraging women in Linux. The point that struck me was "don't treat women stereotypically" (don't follow the link if you're opposed to the 'f-word'), wise advise in any situation.

Actually, I think that when it comes down to it, the entire document was about stereotypes. This point in particular mentioned that the male geeks, when explaining something, would use analogies to cooking or babies. This strikes a couple of chords with me. a) I'm a cook and b) my wife and I are getting ready to have a baby. Rarely does an hour, much less a day, go by that I don't talk to somebody about food. And lately, I've had a lot of conversations about babies with coworkers, most of whom are men.

What I'm getting at is that stereotypes go the other way too. In fact, I'd say that male geeks are doing a pretty good job at building up a stereotype of being good cooks, or at least being into cooking. I blame Alton Brown. But it reminds me of when I was going to cooking school in New Hampshire. Rumor quickly spread among my fellow churchgoers that I was a chef, and suddenly all of the women that I went to church with were either apprehensive that their cooking skills could never match mine, or picked up challenging attitudes towards me, because what right did a man have to be in the kitchen, unless he was washing dishes? Ironically, most of the guys were perfectly okay with it. Another guy, whom I will refer to as Papa Kane (as everybody else did), was considered by most to be the best cook in the congregation. He and I got to be good friends while I was there, and I we both loved picking each others' brains.

Back to the geek and cooking stereotypes. I've spent the last 12 years in the tech industry. I even telecommuted to a Utah ISP while I was living in New Hampshire (had to pay the bills somehow). I started writing code professionally (as in, for a living) a good 7 or 8 years ago. Tuxgirl is 22, and so even if she started professionally at 17 like I did, I'm still ahead of her in experience alone. But let's face it, she could probably code circles around me (except in Perl). But I think I have her beat on cooking, even if only because I went to school and got a degree in it (I was a lousy cook before I went to school for it).

The thing is, I don't fight stereotypes the same way as other people. I mess with people. In Utah Valley, it's even easier to do than a lot of other places because, as near as I've observed, they're a lot more fond of stereotypes. Facial hair is less common here because it's against the dress code at the local university, and that seems to have an effect on people in the area. I've been sporting a beard for some time now, and a goatee for some time before that. It draws a lot of stares in the supermakert, and some people actually ask me about it. But when I get into conversations with people that don't know about my culinary training, I have a lot of fun watching eyes pop, etc. On the other hand, when I went to my cake decorating class, I left all that at the door. When asked, I told them that I loved to watch cake competitions on TV, which is entirely true, and left it at that. I didn't want people to get any more nervous than the beard might have already been making them.

The moral of my long-winded story is, knock it off with the stereotypes. It doesn't help anyone that you're dealing with, and you run the risk of running into people like me that like to mess with peoples' minds.

Tutorial: Clarified Butter

Clarified butter is a pretty important ingredient in the professional cooking and baking worlds, so knowing how to clarify butter is equally important. You see, whole butter isn't really 100% butter. American butter is actually only about 80 - 81% butter fat, maybe 1 - 2% milk solids, and the rest is water. That's right, water. European butter is closer to 82 - 83% butter fat, which is why bakeries that use it tend to have richer-tasting pastries. The problem is, milk solids burn pretty easily. In fact, because of them, whole butter burns at around 250F. When you remove the milk solids, the smoke point for butter actually goes up to about 350F. Technically, you could deep-fry at this temperature, but you probably wouldn't want to with butter.

The process is pretty easy. First, you'll need a container to hold the butter. Each stick of butter is 1/2 cup, so it's pretty easy to figure out. Just make sure you leave a little extra room at the top to keep from spilling. In my example, I used two sticks of butter, so my bowl holds perhaps 1 1/4 to 1/2 cups. If I were you, I'd use a resealable plastic container.

Second, you'll need a pan big enough to hold your container. You might also want a tea towel to put at the bottom of the pan. Put a couple of inches of water in the pan, and then put your container in the water. You'll probably want to make sure the water comes at least half-way up the side of the container, but be careful not to get any inside the container. If some splashes in, it's not the end of the world. Your pan will probably look something like this:



Now, put the pan on the stove if you haven't already, and turn the heat to low. Low, I said! This won't be a fast process, but it also won't be very labor intensive. You can leave the room, but don't leave the house. Make sure you drop by every 10 minutes or so to check on things. Don't worry, the tea towel won't burn, because it's in the water. And if you leave the heat on low, then any plastic containers you use won't melt, because the towel will protect them from the direct heat of the stove. Let the butter slowly melt, until it's completely melted. Go ahead and turn the heat off, and let the butter cool on the counter for an hour or so. It should look something like this:



What happened? Well, water is heavier than fat because it's more dense, so the fat will float to the top and the water will sink to the bottom. This is also helped by the fact that water and fat repel each other anyway. But the milk solids are even lighter, so they float to the top of the butter. In a fast-paced restaurant setting, the solids would probably be skimmed with a spoon, leaving a thin layer of water on the bottom and a thick layer of melted butter on the top. They don't worry so much about the water, because it'll just evaporate when they cook with it. The milk solids, which would burn, are now gone. But we have a little more time, so we're going to take this just another step.

When the butter has reached room tempurature, go ahead and put the lid on the container (or wrap it in plastic wrap) and move it to the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, you'll have a solid layer of fat, with a liquid layer of water on the bottom and that layer of milk solids on top. If you turn it on its side, it would look something like this:



See that layer of water in the bottom? Now all you need to do is scrape the milk solids off the top with a butter knife, and then remove the hunk of butter and pour out the water. Now you have a nice little hunk of 100% butter fat ready for, well, lots of things. You know that fancy restaurant you go to because you just love their sauteed vegetables? Those vegetables were probably sauteed in clarified butter. That steak was probably cooked in butter too. No, I'm not talking about your local chain restaurants. Clarified butter is too expensive, so they're probably using some sort of oil. I'm talking about the really nice restaurant, the one that you took out a second mortgage to dine at, because you saw the chef on TV. Chances are they have a gallon of clarified butter on the line that all of the cooks share.

What else can you use clarified butter for? It's big in the pastry world as well. You can brush bread with it before baking it, or after it comes out of the oven. There's a world of pastries that you can brush it on, in fact. And when working with phyllo dough, what better to brush it with than clarified butter? The possibilities are nearly endless.